Janet Evanovich - Wicked Appetite

“He killed a man. Why aren’t you ordered to capture him or something? Why are you only authorized to stop him from getting the Stones?”

“Wulf has friends in very high places. Beyond that, I can only assume there are circumstances that justify my orders.”

“You don’t look like a guy who would be good at taking orders,” I said, plating his sandwich.

Diesel fixed his brown eyes on me. “It’s a struggle.”

“Maybe I need to go to wizard school,” Glo said. “Someplace where I could take a course in spell recitation. Do you suppose there’s a wizard school? Maybe an online course?”

“Wizards aren’t real,” I said to Glo. “There are no wizards. And wizard school would be a big scam.”

“Criminy,” Glo said. “Just let me know how you feel.” She looked at Diesel. “What do you think?”

“I don’t know any wizards personally.”

“But do you think there could be wizards?”

Diesel finished his sandwich and put his dish in the dishwasher. “ Could be covers a lot of ground.”

“Well, I think there could be wizards,” Glo told him. “I bet Ripple was a wizard. And I bet the book is magical.”

Diesel got a bottle of water from the refrigerator. “Have you ever let Lizzy hold it?”

“No!” Glo scooped the book off the counter and handed it to me. “Do you feel anything?”

“It might be a little warm.”

“Is it glowing?”

“No, but it has a faint green aura.”

“What does that mean?” Glo asked.

I shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m new to all this.”

We looked at Diesel.

“No clue,” Diesel said. “Not my area of expertise, but the grilled cheese was excellent.”

“So maybe someone put a whammy on my book, and that’s why the spells don’t work right,” Glo said. “Maybe there was some rival wizard, and he jinxed Ripple’s book.” She took her book back and shoved it into her tote bag. “I’m going to talk to Nina from the Exotica Shoppe tomorrow. I’ll get to the bottom of this.”

I walked Glo to the door, and we looked down the hill to Mrs. Dugan’s yard, where a tow truck and police car were parked, lights flashing. Mel Mensher had joined the rest of his crew at the crash scene, and all was quiet at my house.

“Shoot,” Glo said.

“Faulty parking brake,” I reminded her.

Glo grimaced, got into her car, and drove away.

“I like her,” Diesel said, standing behind me. “She has imagination.” He slid an arm around my waist and rested his chin on the top of my head. “I like you a lot more. No logical reason for it.”

I thought it was great that he liked me, but it would be better if he knew why.

“I know why,” he said, reading my mind, his lips brushing against my ear, “but I’d jeopardize my standing as a macho jerk if I gave you a big gooey list of reasons. And if I was honest, it would lean heavy to smooth skin and soft breasts.”

“Unh.”

“Is that a good grunt or a bad grunt?”

“I thought you were reading my mind.”

“Sometimes your mind is a mess.”

“I was thinking your standing as a jerk is intact.”

His arm tightened slightly around me, and he kissed me just below my ear. “That’s a huge relief.”

The kiss sent a rush of pleasure humming through me, and I unconsciously murmured, “Mmmmmm.”

Good grief, I thought. Did I just make that utterly rapturous sound? Did I actually moan out loud? Over a kiss, no less. And it wasn’t even a hot kiss. The kiss had been almost friendly!

“I made that sound because I was thinking about cupcakes,” I told him.

“Sweetheart, you wish a cupcake could make you feel that good.”

I was speechless. I felt my mouth drop open and my eyes go wide.

Diesel grinned down at me. “On a scale of one to ten, how offensive was that remark I just made?”

“Seven.”

“I’m off my game. I can be much more offensive than that.”

Something to look forward to.

He turned his attention to the Spook Patrol at the bottom of the hill. “I think we owe them a favor,” he said, pushing me out of the house, locking my front door behind us.

“What kind of favor?” I asked. “I thought we didn’t like them.”

He took my hand and tugged me down the sidewalk. “They’re okay. They’re just doing their job.”

We walked past the cop car to Mel Mensher, and Diesel expressed his sympathy. “Too bad about your van,” Diesel said to Mensher. “How are you guys going to hunt spooks without it?”

“The tow truck guy said the damage was minimal,” Mensher told him. “And in the meantime, Richie went to get his wife’s minivan.”

“I have some information you might find interesting,” Diesel said. “Can I borrow your notepad and pen?”

Mensher pulled his pad and pen from his jacket pocket. “What kind of information is this?”

Diesel wrote something in Mensher’s book and handed it back to him. “See for yourself.”

Mrs. Dugan was standing on the other side of Mensher. She had her arms folded in front of her, watching the van get towed off her tree. She was in her seventies, with short white hair and a fireplug body. Her husband had passed on, and she lived alone with an obese beagle named Morty. Mrs. Dugan and Morty walked by my house twice a day taking their constitutional.

“Will your tree be okay?” I asked her.

“It’s got some bark peeled away, but I think it’ll be fine,” she said. “I couldn’t help but notice Ophelia’s cat came back. I saw him sitting in your window earlier today. Isn’t that nice. I was worried about him. It’s not like he’s a normal cat. What with his eye and all.”

“Do you know how he lost his eye?”

“No. Ophelia would never talk about it. She was very sensitive when it came to that cat.”

“Do you know his name?”

She thought a moment. “I don’t believe I do.”

I said good-bye to Mrs. Dugan, and Diesel and I made our way up the hill to my house.

“I thought Cat 7143 came from the shelter,” Diesel said.

“It did. But it turns out it was my Great Aunt Ophelia’s cat.”

“Makes you wonder, doesn’t it,” Diesel said.

“Compared to the rest of my life these days… it’s not even a four on the one-to-ten wonder scale. What information did you give to Mensher?”

“I gave him Wulf’s Boston address,” Diesel said.

That got a smile out of me. “Does Wulf have a sense of humor?”

“He won’t have one about this.”

“Not at all?”

“The first time Mensher clicks off a picture, Wulf’s sphincter will get so tight his eyes will cross.”

We were almost at my house when Richie motored past us in a green minivan. He stopped next to the tow truck, and in the glare of headlights, Mensher and his crew off-loaded equipment from the broken van to the new minivan. There was a short discussion between Mensher and the tow truck operator, Mensher and his crew piled into the minivan, and the minivan drove away and disappeared around the corner.

“Off to Beacon Hill,” Diesel said.

“You threw them under the bus.”

“Yep.”

“What if Wulf does the burning claw thing on them?”

“They’d probably get a reality show out of it.”

“The last guy to get the burning claw also got dead,” I told him.

“Wulf won’t kill these guys. Unless he’s in a really bad mood. And even then, he’ll probably just maim one or two of them.”

“Oh great. Now you’re making me an accessory to maiming.”

“It’s not like it’s major maiming,” Diesel said. “It’s only a handprint.”

“That’s horrible.”

“You’re such a girl,” he said, smiling at me, like I was dumb but redeemingly cute. He pulled me the short distance to the Cayenne, opened the door, and motioned me in.